A twist on the Joni Mitchell Yellow Taxi song, “They paved paradise and they put up a parking lot.”
They were putting in a parking lot in Finland and stopped for awhile after they found a bit of historical paradise: the oldest known boat in that part of the country.
It couldn’t be left there and just paved over because it wouldn’t support the weight above; they dug a solid 65×23′ of it out for display and had to decide what to do with the random bits left behind.
What they did was a proof-of-concept, and they pulled it off: they cleaned and dissolved the 400-year-old wood into cellulose, spun it–
–and then from the resulting soft, silky yarn, knitted two long sleeveless dresses out of it with a knit-purl pattern that clearly echoes the grain pattern that had been in the wood.
So cool.
More information about it here and here (click at upper right for English.)